


three markers on the path

by Azzandra



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Character Death (because Dimitri dies on this route but it's only mentioned), Dedue Week (Fire Emblem), M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Golden Deer Route (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-06
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:48:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22148944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azzandra/pseuds/Azzandra
Summary: With a little help, Dedue returns home (eventually).
Relationships: Dedue Molinaro & Claude von Riegan, Dedue Molinaro/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 10
Kudos: 76





	three markers on the path

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for Dedue Week, day 2! The prompt for this day was battle/home, so I picked home.

When Dedue first came to consciousness in the infirmary, after Gronder Field, Claude was already by the side of his bed.

"Back to the land of the living, I see," Claude declared, in his own irrepressible style.

Dedue made a sound in his throat, partly out of the pain that he could feel even through the sedative haze, partly because he was questioning whether he truly was dead and this was the punishment the gods had in store for him. It was not a friendly sound.

"Yeah, I feel you," Claude continued. "Living's not all it's cracked up to be sometimes, is it? Still, doesn't seem like a good reason to throw it all away. Tell me something, Dedue. Now that Dimitri's dead, what do you have to fight for?"

Dimitri's name felt like a wound more painful than any on his body at the moment; Dedue wondered if he was not dead, but instead a prisoner being tortured. He had not thought Claude capable of such things, but war turned all men into monsters eventually. It was a wasted effort, if that was the case. Dedue did not think he had anything to give anyway.

"Nothing," Dedue croaked in reply, staring at the ceiling of the infirmary.

He still saw Claude wince from the corner of his eye.

"You're not sounding so good, big guy," Claude said.

Evidently, Dedue thought in response. He was bedbound and heavily injured after his liege died. He could have hardly sounded any better. But he did not feel himself capable of uttering the words, so he grunted instead.

But then he felt Claude's hand slip behind his head, tilting it forward.

"Here. Water?" Claude offered.

Dedue felt the rim of the glass press against his lip. The first sip dbarely soothed his parched throat, and Dedue noticed for the first time how thirsty he felt.

"Slow, now," Claude insisted, rationing out his water in a steady trickle.

After Dedue drank--not quite his fill, but enough that his throat did not feel like sandpaper anymore--Claude took his seat again by the side of his bed.

"Why are you here?" Dedue asked bluntly. Torture or misplaced friendliness, he wanted to get this over with.

"Because I don't actually think you have nothing to fight for," Claude replied. "There was something more than just Dimitri that you lived for, wasn't there? A goal you thought only he could help you achieve?"

Something stuttered in Dedue's chest. It wasn't quite hope, because it settled into his stomach as heavy as despair. 

To imply that the restoration of Duscur was the lynchpin of Dedue's loyalty to Dimitri belittled both of them. Dimitri had been a good man, and would have made the effort to return Duscur to its people regardless of whether Dedue was by his side, and that was the reason Dedue had dedicated himself to being his vassal. Whatever Claude implied...

"I'm not saying I'll give you what you want," Claude said, as if reading Dedue's thoughts--or perhaps just his darkening expression. "I'm just asking you if you really want to die for your ghosts, like Dimitri did, or if you want to live for the living, and get to see a new Duscur."

Dedue watched Claude's face carefully, trying to find the knife behind his words.

"I can't promise you anything," Claude said, "except that if we survive, I hope to create the kind of world where everyone, regardless of heritage, can stand on their own legs and rebuild their homes without fear of anyone else coming to tear them down again just because they're different."

He traced the shape of Claude's face carefully, the jut of his nose, and angle of his jaw, the fall of his hair. Green eyes like a son of Fodlan, but what of the rest of his features? 

Dedue paused at the crossroads stretched before him, one road to death and another to home, behind him a path he had trudged driven by all the pain he'd experience, and considered.

He did just that; consider.

* * *

_  
_

Almyra was farther from Dedue's home than he had ever considered going as a child. In his youth, it had seemed past the edge of the world to him, as a child coming from a land abutted between sea and mountain. Too far away to be real.

Yet, now that he was here, it did not seem any more real to him. Claude had left him to wait on a balcony overlooking a lush interior garden. More used to the claustrophobic interiors of Fodlan's castles, Dedue felt strangely exposed between arched, open doorways and diaphanous drapes of his surroundings.

He looked to the garden, instead. The cooling pool of water had mosaic images of fish swimming along the bottom, creating a charming visual illusion. The greenery crawled up and down pillars, spilled out from alcoves, in a carefully-manicured pretense at wildness that still left pathways unobstructed.

Vines crawled up to the balcony's balustrade, laden with lush pink flowers. Dedue pinched one bloom between his fingers, turned it to observe it more closely--petals within petal, densely packed together and yet each one thin and delicate on its own--and a sweet scent released from the flower. Outside this palace were the dusty streets, the sand-filled cities of Almyra, as dry and hot as the deserts surrounding them. And yet here, they had created an oasis between the stone walls, hoarding all of their greenery and the sweet, humid air that was so much easier to breathe.

Dedue understood what Claude said about having more work to do in Almyra, even when he could have been a king in Fodlan.

"Sorry to keep you waiting."

Dedue turned to find Claude in the doorway, giving a lopsided smile. His arms were crossed--the shirt he wore left them bare, and each corded muscle and scar on display. Dedue found himself pausing for far too long before replying, and Claude's smile turned fractionally wider.

"It is no matter. The wait was enjoyable," Dedue said.

"Pretty, isn't it?" Claude tilted his chin towards the garden, his voice deceptively mild.

"Beautiful," Dedue said. "But hidden away."

Claude nodded, and strode forward to join him on the balcony.

Dedue watched him, because Claude moved differently here than anywhere else. Something in his step, like a prowl, like the learned motion of moving through these twisting palace walls. Dedue wondered if he, too, had a step he had learned in Duscur, and walked differently when he was home.

He considered taking Claude to Duscur, and discovering how he would walk among the flower fields, out in the open.

He put the thought away for now.

"One day..." Claude began, but he let the words trail off. He leaned on the banister instead, and looked out into the garden, hidden away and kept out of reach. His eyes, greener than the foliage, peered as if through the world and into the future that held what he hoped for.

"One day," Dedue echoed in agreement.

They stayed in silence for a while, still alongside even in the aftermath of a war.

* * *

The path of Dedue's life had turned circular. He left Fodlan only to return again. He visited Dimitri's grave, and found the pain no duller than the day he had left.

And then, closing the circle, he returned to Duscur.

Where once there had been blackened walls and broken bridges, towns began sprouting again. The scoured land, steadily reclaimed from its destruction by nature, was now reclaimed twice over by the people who had inhabited it before.

Like frightened animals re-emerging from the woods after a hunting party had gone through, people had also started to appear across Duscur's landscape. Dedue watched from afar as they worked the fields, tended their animals, rebuilt their homes. He waved at them from the road, greeted them with the traditional blessing for their endeavors to bear fruit, but he did not approach.

He watched them fom afar, tracing the arc of their motions. Was there hope in the way they moved? Happiness? Something more bittersweet? 

He stopped in what had once been his hometown, and found it foreign and familiar all at once. The people here were alive; not quite the same, not quite unscarred, but alive. So for a while, he stayed.

When Claude came, Dedue recognized him by the silhouette of his wyvern against the sky, a shadow passing over the sun and disappearing again. But it was sunset before Claude approached.

He was on foot, dressed down from his usual regalia and walking comfortably in a wyvern rider's leather coat and breeches. Unless one knew his face, they were unlikely to know his title, and so he strode confidently to the edge of the town, where Dedue sat on an old stump.

"Were you waiting for me?" Claude asked.

"Maybe not for you in particular," Dedue said.

"Oh. Looking for a sign, huh?" Claude grinned, and peered around. The stump Dedue sat on was the only sign that the rolling green hills around them had once been partially forested. It was quiet, but it was a human kind of quiet; the were the sounds of the nearby town--voices indistinct with distance, the clang of tools, the banging of doors.

"It's better you did not delay any more than you did," Dedue said, and moved aside to make room for Claude on the stump.

Claude sat down without hesitation, almost too familiar in his mannerisms, but only in constract with Dedue's stoicism.

"How so?" Claude asked, looking up into the darkening evening sky.

Dedue looked up as well, and kept his silence.

The first pop and flash of light startled Claude, so much so he nearly jumped out of his skin. But as Dedue pressed a hand on Claude's knee to keep him in place, and as more fire-flowers flew up and exploded into the air, Claude once again relaxed, and his silence began to tinge with wonder.

They watched the entire display of fireworks; fewer than Dedue remembered as a child, but just as vivid as in his memories. 

At one point, long after Dedue had forgotten his hand on Claude's knee, and the last pop of light in the air had petered out, leaving only the smell of smoke behind, Claude leaned up and brought his lips to Dedue's ear.

"If you were looking for a sign, that was a pretty spectacular one," he whispered. His warm breath feathered lightly against Dedue's skin, betraying Claude's position, and his proximity.

"You are right," Dedue conceded, and turned his head to capture Claude's lips.


End file.
